Day 145 (11 September) - Mile 1981.25 - 1994.64

Hwy 242, near McKenzie Pass (Stayed in Eugene, OR) to Unpaved Old Santiam Wagon Road

My watch alarm went off at 6:00 AM on my one day I get to sleep in. To make things worse, I left it on the dresser so I had to get out of bed to shut it off. I just want to sleep in till 7:00 AM...is this to much to ask?!?  Oh well.  I did manage to fall asleep for a little bit before 7:00 AM and then got up. There is a lot to do in little time, so I better get started. 
I went into the kitchen where Carol greeted me and began cooking fresh eggs and toast and hot tea...just what I need. Stormy, her husband then came in and managed to entertain us with his crazy stories throughout breakfast. After breakfast he gave me a tour is the rest of the house followed by a tour of his garage with classic BMW motorcycles....interesting guy. 

OK...time to get to work. I prepared 7 days worth of food to get me to Cascade Locks, Oregon, just south of the Washington border. It amazing that we will be in Washington in one week!

We then drove to Annemarie and Dean's house, stoping at Albertson's for a few things, to get Brad & Share Bear. We were supposed to be there at 11:00 AM, but got there closer to noon...not too bad. But then we were all hungry for lunch, so took the time to eat and then took our time to pack up the 4Runner. We finally got out of there around 1:00 PM...it's starting to get late. 
Before leaving Share Bear realized that she needed fuel and Tim left the fuel in the trailer, so when we got to Sisters on the way to the trail, we stopped at the hardware store to buy some. We got to McKenzie Pass after 2:00 PM, but had to make time to check out the Dee Wright Observatory just before the trailhead. Check out this cool structure made of lava rocks:

Dee Wright Observatory

The cool part of the building is that you go inside and look through openings labeled with the name of the mountain you are seeing through it. Here is Mount Washington:

Mount Washington through a window

We got back to the 4Runner and drove the 2/10 mile to the trailhead and was finally ready to hike just before 3:00 PM.

Ready to hike

The original plan was to be back on trail by noon and slack pack 17 miles to Highway 20. However, now that it is 3:00 PM we had to shorten the slack pack just over 13 miles to Old Santiam Wagon Road. This is still pushing it to get there before dark, but we decided to go for it.  Unfortunately the hike started out very difficult with the first almost 3 miles walking over a lava field.

Not easy terrain to hike

This is where we entered Mount Washington Wilderness. Here is a cool photo of the sign with Mount Washington to the right:

Mount Washington Wilderness sign with the mountain

As we left Three Sisters Wilderness we got a great view of two of the sisters.

Two sisters of three

When we finally got through the lava fields we entered a burn area with an awesome trail. Actually, any trail would be awesome at this point after walking through the miserable lava field. 

Nice trail.

We hiked right towards Mount Washington:

At this point we have come about halfway and it was after 5:30 PM. We still had 6.5 miles to hike. Luckily the trial stayed smooth and slowly descended for those 6.5 miles. Plus, luck seemed to be on our side when we came across this PCT sign with a lucky horseshoe:

Lucky PCT sign of the day

We made it to the road just after 7:30 PM before sunset. Tim was there waiting for us and hung out until we had our tents setup to ensure that we had everything we needed. We will see him the morning of the fourth day for a slack packing day. 

I got a photo of my campsite as Tim left to go back to the log cabin he is staying in. 

Home for the night